Wednesday, Aug 30, 20172. Bodies and bodies and bodies and blood and bones.

“Plu-ple-ase. P…”

Such a sickening gurgle of noise from his lips, tears caught in his throat and words. That one plea, those six simple letters and all the strength in the world can’t bring them to sound anything other than desperate. Begging.

Elis is loosing it all tonight.

Elis is loosing his life all over again. His heart is breaking into dust. And all they do is laugh.

“They’ve done NOTHING WRONG!”

The heartbreak turns to venom as the acid in his stomach screams to be heard. And before him, all he can see are the remains of his family, tied down, beaten and fading away.

Of his four children, only two remain now. And of their own, swaddled bundles lay limp and silent on the ground. His wife lies bleeding, buried in the corpses of their murdered sons. His daughters, crying, plead with him for their lives through glassy, desperate eyes.

And all he can do is watch.

Oh how he loves them. His oldest daughter, at fifteen, cries for him with her mothers stare. Her own homemade family already lost. Her husband slaughtered, her child in pieces. She claws at the ground as if she can pull him too her through sheer will alone. But there is no moving for Elis. Not when wooden stakes drive through his hands into the soil below. Not when the weight of men and rocks stand upon his back and legs.

Not when the weight of his heart pulls him down to the earth’s very core.

Elis is loosing it all tonight.

‘They had a chance, my brother. And you made the decision for them. They perish under your watch.’

And Elis is silent once more, for what words are strong enough to argue with the truth? He loved his family and he would die for them. And tonight they would die for him.

But who would wish this life upon anyone? Not I. Not I.

Many days had passed and many weeks since the six had returned from the forest with their curse and this sickness. They’d left desperate to find survival for their village and returned with death on their hands and blood on their lips.

They were the first. Of all the firsts, these six were it. But now their numbers had grown, infected by the greed and power. And only Elis and one other had resisted as the villagers, one by one, were drawn into the fold.

They will not take my family. They will not become this.

So now they become something else instead. They become the first martyrs of the vampire race.

‘You’re loosing it all tonight, Elis. And you will remain here to watch them rot. Till the flies and crows pick out their eyes and the wolves come for their bones. You will remain here forever more, the man who gave up his family in sacrifice for his stubborn heart.’

“I’m sorry…”

But they don’t hear him now. They’re just shells. All the moons and all the suns and just the bones remain. Bodies and bodies and bodies and blood and bones.